


Around the Kitchen Table

by SttatusQuo



Category: Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Genre: F/M, pranks gone wrong
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-13
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-08-30 16:05:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8539525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SttatusQuo/pseuds/SttatusQuo
Summary: Set not long after Jupiter's return to earth.  Things are beginning to settle out and settle in.  Jupiter spends quite a bit of time at the kitchen table at home and at Stinger's house studying and thinking things through.  Little stories that run through a kitchen or galley somewhere on earth or in space.





	1. New Ways

**Author's Note:**

> Something I wanted to keep that didn't work out as part of a larger story.  
> Not my characters not my 'verse.  
> This is apparently going to grow up into a small series of snapshots in the life of the characters.

“So is the hard part over now?” Jupiter asked Stinger as they settled in their chairs around the table. The Skyjackers had their chairs turned around backwards to accommodate wings. Everyone had been coming and going for several weeks and Jupiter had moved back home. This had been the first time Jupiter had had all three of her friends in the same place at the same time in what felt like forever.

Kiza added water then honey to the cups of zavarka from the ancient electric samovar that was threatening to take over most of that part of the kitchen. Jupiter had liberated the gigantic relic of an appliance from a junk pile on the street. It hadn’t worked at first and had definitely seen better days but after the cord was replaced and the entire thing cleaned thoroughly it was ready for the times when Tsing and some of her crew would be visiting. Offering hospitality was in her bones. If it made other people uncomfortable, they’d just have to get over it.

Stinger looked at Caine who ducked his head as he brought up one hand to his mouth but not before she saw the corner of his mouth turn up from the smile he was trying to hide. 

“What!?” Jupiter pinned Caine with a faux glare then regretted it because he looked like he thought she was serious and wished he was invisible. She wasn’t going to like any of the answers she was about to get. Kiza put the cups in the center of the table along with a plate of sandwiches and took her chair between Stinger and Caine.

“Majesty,” began Stinger and then stopped abruptly when Jupiter turned that same gaze on him. With an audible swallow he met her eyes and said “When you’re Entitled, the hard things never stop.”  


All the fight left Jupiter. “So you’re telling me that for the rest of my life I’m going to need to be concerned about where the next attack is coming from, then?” Jupiter reached for her cup and blew on the steaming liquid that was still too hot to drink.  


Stinger’s gaze was steady and compassionate. “You didn’t grow up in their world, Majesty. Security isn’t a way of life for you… yet.”

“It doesn’t sound like much of a life to me, Stinger.”

“It will be, your Majesty. All the splendors of the universe await you.”


	2. Return of the Wings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caine and Stinger come home after reinstatement

Jupiter was sitting at the kitchen table chewing on the pen cap as she read another column of numbers and tried to understand the scope of her wealth. It bordered on incomprehensible. She was going to ask Stinger to find her a tutor when he and Caine got back from their reinstatement business with the Legion. Aegis was overhead but she didn't feel as safe without them around.

“Majesty?” Kiza poked her head in the doorway to the kitchen. “You might want to come outside to see this.”

Glad of any interruption, Jupiter dropped her pen on the table and followed her friend to the front porch. “What’s up?”

Kiza was shading her eyes as she scanned the skies. “There,” she said pointing at the grav beam that was descending from a shielded ship into the corn field.

“Aren’t they a little high up for a delivery?” Jupiter worried. Two figures entered the grav beam and began a slow descent. Jupiter recognized Caine and then Stinger and hugged Kiza to her from the side. “Yay!! I bet you’re glad to have your dad back.”

“Yes, your Majesty, “she smiled. “Very glad.”

Almost the moment the words were spoken, the grav beam suddenly snapped off leaving both men in free-fall. Jupiter screamed as she watched the horror unfold until two pair of wings snapped open behind them, slowing their plunge as her heart pounded from the initial shock. Relief flooded through her suddenly leaving her a little light-headed and she sagged in relief against Kiza who promptly put an arm around her to steady her. “Oh my,” she sighed as she stared up at the pair making lazy circles around each other. At a distance they were silhouette but the wings were certainly modeled on what she recognized as a raptor style. Maybe eagles and owls weren’t as native to the Earth as she thought. Muttering “I’m gonna kill them for scaring me like that,” she watched them glide toward them. 

“That’s how they used to be,” whispered Kiza with glistening eyes. “Thank you, Your Majesty. Thank you so much for restoring them.”

Jupiter started to correct her about the Majesty and bit her tongue. The moment was too important because it sounded like Kiza was watching her father brought back to life. She wondered what it was like for Caine and if he would be different afterward.

Stinger, clad in black that bore a silvery blue approximation of Jupiter’s seal on his collar, landed first about twenty feet away followed by Caine. Kiza sprinted out to her father and wrapped herself around his neck in a fierce hug. “Da!” Jupiter envied her as she followed more slowly, feeling Caine’s eyes on her.

He looked different. Bigger didn’t cover it. Certainly the wings were dramatic but he seemed to have acquired more presence and confidence as if the shame of not having the wings had washed away a layer of psychological grime. His wings flicked out, fully extended and Jupiter caught her breath veru aware of his eyes on her. They really were magnificent-brown with hints of bronze and gold. Stingers were much the same with more gold feathers interspersed.

Stinger peeled Kiza off of him gently and dropped to one knee followed instantly by Caine. Their wings brushed the ground briefly disturbing the leaves that were beginning to accumulate from the early fall weather.

“Majesty,” he said looking up at her with more emotion that she was used to seeing in his eyes. Caine’s head remained bowed. “We thank you for your most gracious…”

“Stinger…” Jupiter started, “Please...”

“Please, Your Majesty, let me say this..”

“It’s important,” Kiza whispered from behind her.

Jupiter waved a hand for him to continue “You’re killin’ me.”

“I… we... would like to thank you for your pardon and your friendship. I… we… pledge ourselves to your service until such time as Your Majesty sees fit to have us return to service with the Legion.”

“I don’t know what to say…” Jupiter started.

“Just say yes,” Kiza whispered. “They could be sent back if you don’t.”

“Like that’s going to ever happen,” snapped Jupiter over her shoulder to Kiza before turning back to the soldiers in front of her. “I accept you but we’ll talk about what the full terms of employment are going to look like later.”

“Majesty?” said Stinger still on one knee, “You have to seal your mark on the uniform. Here.” He indicated her mark on the neck of his uniform.

“Stand up, then, both of you,” she said as she rolled up her sleeve to reveal the faintly luminescent tattoo that marked her as Entitled. Caine looked at Stinger but hadn’t looked at her yet. Stinger shrugged and they both rose to stand at attention.

“I don’t know what all this means in the greater scheme of things but I don’t want either of you going anywhere,” Jupiter said slowly. “If you’re going to work for me though it has to be something you want to do- so I’m going to hold my arm up and if you want to work for me you can press your own insignia to it because it has to be your choice.”

Stinger stepped forward quickly and leaned down. Jupiter met him with her arm. There was a brief tingle and it was done. What had been an outline was now a solid disc on his uniform collar. While her arm was there she snaked it around his neck and pulled him down into a hug. He stiffened and then she felt his arms move around her and a brief pressure. “Thank you,” she whispered against his neck. “Thank you for everything. If you ever want out of this gig, just say the word and it’s done.” 

Releasing Stinger she stepped back and looked at Caine, standing stiffly at attention with his eyes fixed on the horizon. “Caine?”

“Your Majesty.” There was nothing in his voice but if his body got any tighter he was going to snap in two. She heard Stinger take a breath to say something and held up her hand. 

“Look at me.”   
Caine's eyes snapped to hers and she saw the guarded and impassively neutral gaze of a soldier. This would require some handling. “Do you want to work for me?”

“If Your Majesty wishes me to.”

“If I didn’t want you to, I wouldn’t be asking. Trust me on this.”

Something melted into his eyes and he looked out over her head again. Jupiter could sense the hope he was so terribly afraid to have. “Eyes on me, soldier. No hiding.”

He met her gaze steadily again. Under any other circumstances the intensity of his gaze would have been unnerving. Jupiter walked over and stepped into his space deliberately watching as his nostrils flared briefly. “The answer to the next question is either yes or no.”

He was holding his breath. She was certain of it. “Just so you know,” she said gently, “I hope you’ll stay around. Staying has to be on terms that you find acceptable, though. So my question is 'Do you want to stay?"

Caine had the grace not to look too relieved. “Yes, your Majesty,” he said gravely as one corner of his mouth lifted with the ghost of a smile.

“So you’re signing on and letting me know with certainty that if you find you don't like the job you’ll tell me?

“Yes, your Majesty”

Jupiter held up her arm and Caine leaned forward to make the contact. The tingle in her arm as her seal activated was echoed by the increase in her heart rate as she hugged him as well. “Mine,” she whispered with a smile as her buried his nose in her neck and breathed her in. Her throat felt tight and her eyes began to sting. Quickly she stepped back and scrubbed a hand across her face like her mother did when she didn’t want anyone to see her emotions. 

“So let’s see these new wings, Skyjackers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So much of how I see these characters almost always passes through a kitchen. Because, I think, that it is is so many ways where the heart of the family/pack lies. In the midst of the gee-whiz technology it is still the relationships to the people you care about that matters. Thanks for reading.


	3. The Sickening Moment Gravity Won

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nightmares more often than not.

In the Chicago house the kitchen table was the hub of family activity, gossip, planning and general complaining about anything and everything. There was never quiet but it was a place that you could go with a mug of something hot or a shot of something bracing and be left alone with your thoughts yet gently buoyed by the love and noise of your family. After years together all the family could tell by body language alone who wanted to talk and who didn’t. Jupiter had lived so much of her life at the end of the table in her chair as she did homework, drank tea, or sat lost in thought. Aleska was everything except very demonstrative when it came to expressing affection deliberately but she would invariably walk behind Jupiter when she was sitting at the table and touch her shoulder or hair briefly in passing. Jupiter knew that stopping almost always meant a serious conversation- and those often weren't pleasant. 

This particular morning at an entirely different and much quieter kitchen table Jupiter was still wrung out emotionally from the last nightmare she’d had. Lately it felt like every time she closed her eyes all she could feel was that awful moment of sliding off the platform just seconds after Balem and the horrifying, soul-shattering feel of falling through the smoke and searing heat to certain death before Caine caught her. It troubled her that instead of becoming less frequent as time passed they were increasingly frequent- particularly after she’d had a stressful day dealing with the fallout from her ascension. She surfaced screaming once again from the nightmare in what had become her room upstairs at Stinger's farmhouse, wrapped tightly in Caine’s arms and feeling like she’d been poisoned from all the adrenaline in her system. Snuggling with Caine after she’d calmed down had led to other distractions that took her worries completely off her mind. Still, she needed to talk things through with someone.

Talking to Caine or Stinger would be her last resort.  
___

The first time it happened after she returned to earth she woke to Aleska’s worried face above her as she shook her shoulders to wake her with Aunt Nino was hovering in the background. Apparently she had also awakened most of the household with her cries because the basement door opened and she’d heard her uncle hiss something in Russian that she couldn’t quite make out. Aunt Nino went upstairs and she heard Russian spoken in hushed tones. Eventually everyone went back to bed and Jupiter lay back down and pretended to try to sleep again but relived the sickening moments of free-fall every time she closed her eyes. Eventually she gave up on getting any sleep at all, eased out her bed, and tiptoed upstairs to the back door to get some fresh air. Caine was waiting at the foot of the stairs looking concerned and every bit as miserable as she felt. There was tension in every line of his body from heel to wingtip. 

Jupiter sped down the stairs into his arms and the tears she hadn’t realized she needed to shed began to leak out- hot with remembered fear and shame. 

“I heard you cry out,” he said quietly against the side of her head as she pressed against him so tightly that it made trying to crawl inside him might be an option. “I couldn’t get to you but I heard your mother wake you…” He pulled his head back to look at her face a moment longer as Jupiter moved her head to wipe under her eyes. “Another bad dream?”

Jupiter nodded and took a deep breath as she struggled to calm down gripping Caine like he was the last anchor to sanity. His wings came round her, blocking the cool night breeze. For someone who had known so little comfort in his life, Caine was surprisingly good at helping her reel her emotions back into some semblance of order. Maybe it was the pack instinct finding its previous outlet . She surmised that it wouldn’t be so far removed from dealing with comrades in the aftermath of battle. As soldiers, Skyjackers would have to be able to move past traumatic events survival and he would certainly be in a position to know how to cope with that. Like everything else he did, Caine would have become an expert in managing stress as well as helping others in his unit. From the first time she met him he had always known what to do to help calm her fears. Still it felt wrong to her to discuss it with him-she didn’t want to rub salt into old wounds.

“Your family is worried about you,” Caine said quietly. “Your aunt says that your mother was just the same after your father was killed for years afterward.”

Jupiter thought about it for a moment. “That’s what they were talking about upstairs after I… Caine, what else did they say?”

“Your uncle thinks that you were-- hurt-- at the clinic and that he is going to -- Caine tipped his head to the side indicating his com implant didn’t always translate Russian perfectly—make words with his son tomorrow.”

“Poor Vladie,”sighed Jupiter, “Not! He could have gotten me killed if it weren’t for you.” The wind shifted and the cool air from the lake began to blow in chilling gusts through the neighborhood. Her pajamas were thin against the cold and Jupiter pressed close to Caine for warmth feeling a wing curve out and around her to block the wind.

“I feel safe right here,” she murmured against his chest as her left arm snaked around to embrace his back as the fingers of her right spread over his chest. Jupiter caught the glimmer of her tattoo in the dark as she closed her eyes. She was so tired, so worried, and so overwhelmed with trying to get a grip on what had happened and not let on about it at home. Caine’s arms tightened around her and she felt his lips brush the top of her head as she cuddled for warmth. What she wouldn’t give for that few hours she spent in the bunk with him as she waited on the Aegis cruiser until her house was fixed- that had been weeks ago and the last completely peaceful sleep she remembered.  
Dimly she heard the din of her mother’s alarm clock and reluctantly peeled herself off of Caine’s warmth. “I gotta go.”  
His hand was warm against her face for a moment before he stepped back and then ducked around the side of the house. She saw the glow of his boots flash briefly in the window of the house next door and heard the sound of his wings fade into the distant dark.

With a sigh she headed back inside to make the coffee and get ready for work.

\---  
Frowning into her coffee, Jupiter decided to talk to Captain Tsing and see if in all the pieces and parts of the wide universe she now owned that there wasn't *something* that would help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not my characters, not my 'verse.  
> Just word doodles escaping my brain.


	4. Things Spoken and Unspoken

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caine is home in time for breakfast with Kiza who maybe knows more about him than he's comfortable with.

Two miles out from the house, Caine smelled bacon. Dawn was just breaking when he left Jupiter at the Chicago house and lit on top of an outbound train. It was carrying grain of some type that wrapped him in a sweet smell as he crouched on a box car. From Chicago it was about 20 minutes earth standard to the closest point that the tracks came to Stinger’s place. He could have flown the whole way faster but he enjoyed the wind and the ability to relax his vigilance. There were other Skyjackers now, guarding their Queen and he’d checked the duty roster to find a name that brought an approving upturn to his lips. Stinger had mentioned she’d be joining the squad of troopers he was assembling. They were based up in the Aegis for now and stayed out of Jupiter’s way when she was on board the ship. 

Every single one of the Skyjackers guarding her had fallen in love with Earth bacon. There was nothing like it in the universe and every time Kiza cooked it a small knot of off-duty troopers formed outside the back door, looking hopeful. This morning there were six of them waiting expectantly. Kiza had banned them from the kitchen when she cooked emphatically stating that more than three pair of wings crowded her too much. 

As far as he could tell they were a good group and becoming tightly knit from the enforced time on the Aegis cruiser. Jupiter hadn’t wanted to meet them initially- too much too fast, she’d said. He understood that from his time in the Badlands as it had been maybe a day from the time he came to his senses with blood in his mouth until his court-martial and the pain in his back paling in comparison to seeing Stinger’s wings ripped away as well. He didn’t remember the portal to the Badlands just coming to as the Skyjacker guards who threw him out onto the sand closed the portal and the sand blew stung the raw patches where his wings had been. It had taken him weeks to process all that happened. She was struggling but she was trying hard to keep things normal for her family and learn what she needed to.

Half a mile out they spotted him and one waved as acknowledgement. Kiza drew their attention as she exited with a large platter of pancakes, bacon, and a squeeze bottle of honey. Danner, the newest of the squad took the platter and headed around the house to the picnic table that Stinger had installed in the back. The benches were easy seating with wings. 

Caine landed next to the truck in the yard and walked up the stairs. Kiza was just sitting down with a cup of coffee and started to get up.

“I got it,” Caine said a he grabbed some bacon and the last pancake, rolling them into what Jupiter called a breakfast burrito, poured a cup of coffee and headed to the table. Flipping the chair adjacent to her around he sat down, wings brushing the floor until he adjusted them up a bit.

Kiza paused before sipping her coffee and regarded him over the rim. “So how is she?”

“Still having screaming nightmares,” he said slowly. “I don’t know how to help those. Last night she couldn’t go back to sleep and came outside for a while. Then it was time for her to go to work.”

“Who’s guarding her now?” Kiza asked more by way of making conversation than anything else.

“Lieutenant Minor,” he said. “I trust her. Stinger chose well with that one.”

“Are you going back tonight?”

Caine gave Kiza a sideways look that said “You did not seriously ask me that question” and said nothing.

The silence stretched out.

Kiza took her dishes to the sink. “Don’t think that I don’t hear you with your own nightmares when you’re sleeping, Caine. You’re pushing yourself too hard and wearing yourself too thin. Maybe you should talk to Da or her Majesty about it.”

The sound of the front door closing and Caine’s steps on the walk followed by the sound of wings answered her. Self-reflection wasn't his strong suit.

“If you don’t talk to Da about it, Caine, I will,” she called knowing he’d hear every word.

There was a soft sound behind her and she turned to find Danner with the dirty platter and a few coffee cups from outside. Oh God, she’d dragged the Queen’s business out in front of the guard. Discretion was a game she’d never had to play before at this   
level. Her eyes filled with tears she felt the brush of his shoulder past hers as he set the platter by the sink followed by the comforting the weight of his hand on her shoulder.

“Speak to the Commander, “he said softly in the avian patois she shared with her father. “I didn’t hear anything.”

Out of words, Kiza hugged him and realized from his brand that he was also an avian splice of Marcellian Cahun’s. After a brief hesitation, he hugged her back. His irises were gold hexagons when he stepped back, started to say something and fled the room as gracefully as he could. She was pretty sure that her eyes were golden as well.

Kiza looked after him thoughtfully and rolled her shoulders to ease the heat between her shoulder blades where a mating Queen's wings would be. Now she really needed to talk to her father.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not my characters, not my 'verse.


End file.
